14 August 2007

The unfair advantage

This is really an impressive record:

A German man has broken his own world record for holding his breath under water after managed to remain submerged for 15 minutes and two seconds. Tom Sietas, a 30-year-old engineering student from Hamburg exceeded his own Guinness record time by 37 seconds at the world free diving championships in New York.
And this is really a long article, full of a lot of superfluous details, so you may very well miss this crucial point:
Mr Sietas said that holding his breath helped him to deal with stress, such as getting over an argument with his girlfriend, because he didn't think about anything when he was under water.
Oh, come on, man, this is pathetic. With my mileage (no, I am not disclosing how long here), I can easily out-hold you at any given time. I didn't talk to her for a week once!

Ha!

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13 August 2007

Yet another professor

I write as a Jew and as a synagogue member.

If I had a dollar (no, make it shekel) for every article that starts with these words, I would be able... wait, let me make a quick estimate... to replace our old TV set by a new-fangled LCD flat screen with myriad of new features.

So you can understand my reluctance to post anything about the predictably dreary and rambling article by another connoisseur of high moral ground. But an Hasbara grunt must do what an Hasbara grunt must do...

So, it is Andrew Benjamin now, Professor of Critical Theory in the Centre and at the University of Technology, Sydney. And a philosopher to boot - go argue with a guy like this. Fortunately (or not) the article looks like a cheese that was depleted by mice in a major way. To start with - the famous straw man, as usual built by the author for the author's enjoyment:
However what endures for many as an outrage is Israel hijacking the Holocaust for its political ends: the Holocaust is used to sustain a specific geo-political situation.
In general, this is eerily similar to the logical pirouette so beloved by modern anti-Semites: state of Israel defends its barbaric actions by accusing the critics of antisemitism, ergo we are not anti-Semites when we rightfully criticize Israel. This circular logic is used these days so frequently that the whole business of identifying an anti-Semite has become a new branch of science.

In particular, let us see how our professor illustrated his claim above - it is fantastic for a person with so impressive scientific credentials:
The other night in Sydney at the Great Synagogue a speaker defended the incursion into Lebanon on the grounds that it would prevent a further Holocaust.
You see: the state of Israel hijacks whatever it hijacks, because a speaker in a synagogue happens to be an idiot... sheesh. It truly looks like there are some nincompoops attending the Great Synagogue in Sydney, although it hurts me to say so. But it's not all, look at this:
Until Jews are prepared to argue that the Holocaust and its legacy is not the province of a nation state, let alone a justification for Zionism, our responsibility in relation to the dead will continue to be betrayed.
Who is it exactly that argues thusly, our learned professor does not say. Nor does he know, apparently, that Zionism predates the Holocaust by a few years, but this could be helped by some easy-reading leaflets.

I could explain to Mr Benjamin that the Israeli officials and the whole officialdom, while mentioning Holocaust frequently*, normally do not make it a habit to justify their usual misdeeds by Holocaust. And if he hears one doing so, it is most probably an idiot (see above). I, personally, do not invoke Holocaust more than two or three times a day, and this mostly when trying to jump a queue abroad, because here it does not work for some reason.

But this was only for appetizers, let's continue:
The consequence of this is that a critique of Zionism or a disagreement over the policies of Israel are taken at best as a criticism of Jews and, at worst, as anti-Semitic. The evidence is clear. Attacks on synagogues in Seattle and Parramatta underscore the results of this. These attacks are the result of the politics of a nation state.

Israel, in its present manifestation, sustains anti-Semitism.
You see, how easy it is? Another one of the "I do not support, but I understand" crowd. So, the attacks on the synagogues all over the world are not the deed of some Muslim folks, incensed by anti-Israeli (and frequently anti-Jewish) rhetoric of their leaders, but a sole result of the Israeli existence "in its present manifestation", whatever is the (quite sinister) meaning of this utterance. An elegant attempt of back-assward logic (see "philosopher", will you). But convenient to Israeli-haters and Jew-haters all over the world, just check the links to this article.

I could continue, but Mr Bagel here has already done a good enough mincemeat of the article, so I shall quote his reference to the article's "main" point:
Mr Benjamin quite early in his opinion piece states: "The source of the feeling is simple: Israel claims that it continues to act in my name." I'm sorry to burst your own self inflated bubble Mr Benjamin but I seriously doubt if the State of Israel has even any knowledge of you. Pray tell me where you find the evidence that Israel as a country acts on behalf of all Jews and especially of you?
The last worthy point is that "bulldozing houses" in Gaza. The last houses to be bulldozed were these of the leaving settlers (for some inexplicable reason this point has escaped many a bleeding heart). And we all know what is going on in Gaza and around it. Or do we? Probably the news have not reached yet some esoteric faculties in Sydney...

So, rest assured, dear professor: not in your name.

(*) Due to unhappy circumstances beyond my control, I have become a frequent visitor of a local cemetery lately. My (admittedly anecdotal) observation is that almost every other tombstone bears a text of the following contents: "In memory of ... and ... who perished in the Holocaust". Since this is an internal Israeli affair, hardly meant for Hasbara purposes, I do not think the text is a work of some sinister power. So I suspect that many of these officials do have a justification for mentioning Holocaust, even if the learned professor cringes at it.

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.
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Hot Scot bares backside

This clip has almost finalized the issue for many a feverish female brain: what, if at all, do our friends Scots wear under the kilt?

Unfortunately, the prudish CNN left it at that:

But maybe some bootlegged version shows the truth...

And all hail Dr David McCracken!

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12 August 2007

ADSS

Another Day - Same Shit, they say. Let me see:

Here:

Jordan's military tribunal sentenced a gang of four men to five years in prison with hard labor on Thursday for a robbing spree that targeted the country's Christian population on religious grounds.
And here:
Egyptian authorities have detained two Coptic Christian activists suspected of posting anti-Islamic messages on a Christian web site, a police official and the lawyer for the two said Thursday.

Fawzy and Ezzat are the founders of the Cairo branch of the Middle East Christian Association, known as MECA, a Canada-based group that advocates Christians rights. Police did not specify which postings had led to the arrest of the two.
So - what else is new?

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Mulling things aloud...

Doesn't this sign (from here):


remind you one of the late Kurt Vonnegut's drawings?

(Nah, they are good people, really, but they should read a bit more).

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11 August 2007

Debka goes nuclear...

Another great intelligence coup could be recorded in Debka annals.

New York authorities were taking extra counterterrorism precautions Friday in response to what they said was an unsubstantiated report on an Israeli Web site regarding a radiological threat to the city.

Officials said Friday that they had not changed the city's terror alert status in response to online chatter mentioning a truck packed with radioactive material. But police deployed extra radiological sensors on street, water and air patrols, and were stopping vehicles at checkpoints in lower Manhattan and around the city.
The whole brouhaha stems from a news item on Debkafile, stating the following:
The al Qaeda communications accuse the Americans of the grave error of failing to take seriously the videotape released by the American al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gaddahn last week. “They will soon realize their mistake when American cities are hit by quality operations,” said one message.

Another said the attacks would be carried out “by means of trucks loaded with radio-active material against America’s biggest city and financial nerve center.”
I wouldn't even refer to the whole story (after all, this is so regular on Debka and, besides, Debka is not paying the NYC cops salaries, which by now include some hefty overtime bonuses) but for an interview I happen to stumble upon today on the Army radio. The Debka top dog himself was proud to tell the interviewer about the famous Debka know-how in intercepting Al Qaeda messages and interpreting them for the public good.

The interview climaxed at the following statement:
It could happen anytime anywhere.
I suggest that this become the Debka's new logo.

Another idea would be for Debka to branch out in predicting earthquakes around Pacific Rim. Good business.

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Banana justice served

Thanks deity, there are still some corners of the world where political correctness is held at bay.

An Indian suspect was forced by police to eat 50 bananas as a laxative, to retrieve a necklace he was accused of stealing and swallowing. When the bananas failed to produce the desired effect, police fed Sheikh Mohsin rice, chicken and local bread. Finally the necklace, which appeared on an X-ray taken on the suspect, was excreted and retrieved.
I can imagine the legal brouhaha that would have resulted in Israeli or other enlightened court of justice had the police came up with an idea like that. Most probably the suspect would have been stopped up by his lawyer forever...

And more justice:
A sweeper was paid to retrieve the exhibit from the toilet. Mr Mohsin was asked to wash it.
Yep.

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Another Dead Sea miracle

Search and rescue teams Thursday night saved an eight-year-old boy who had been swept almost three kilometers into the Dead Sea. The search took five hours for the boy, who is said to have recited Psalms while considering swimming to the mountains in the distance.

Shneur Zalman Friedman, from Jerusalem, was swimming with his father and brother at the Neveh Midbar Beach, which was open at that time for ultra-Orthodox men and boys only."

It was a miracle," said Yehuda Meshi-Zahav of the Zaka search and rescue squad, which also participated in the search.
I am not against miracles, especially if one is needed to save a life. In any case, miracle-shmiracle: the boy is alive and well, and this is what is important.

Just a tiny remark - reciting Psalms and considering things is fine and probably makes a good yeshiva boy - but reciting Psalms while swimming could have been even better...

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10 August 2007

Some news on daily cossacks

It looks like the (in)famous Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of DailyKos, has a long history in support of the Republican Party and trained with the CIA in 2001.

Not that the above activities make him necessarily a villain, it is just strange that the man of his firm beliefs is... well, look at this stuff here. Keep in mind that the people who compiled this are not attacking him from the right, far from it.

Hmm...

Via Lagwolf on Dodgeblogium.

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Is it the time to clip the wings?

I am writing this with a heavy heart. Having pen friends (and personal friends) on the left and on the right, I have come with time to one simple motto - my friend must be a mensch first. And last. Everything else is secondary. And this blog has consistently avoided fiery political rhetorics attacking this or other side, unless we are talking about absolute moral imperatives. It seems to me that looking for common ground is a better alternative.

But the last case, that of a learned professor* cursing a senior IDF officer, using words suitable for a souk brawl and expressing wishes more consistent with addressing an absolute evil the likes of which I can hardly imagine - this case just broke the seal.

Police opened on Wednesday a criminal investigation against Professor Hillel Weiss for his bombastic public statements against Judea Division commander Col. Yehuda Fuchs during Tuesday's evacuation of the Hebron marketplace.

Weiss cursed Fuchs, saying "may his wife be a widow, his mother bereaved, and his children orphans."
From another source:
The professor also said that the security officers who carried out the evacuation are "worse than the Germans."
He said more, and I heard part of the recording of his hateful "speech" on the radio today.

Now, we can do what we have always done: ignore the hateful outburst from the mad ultra-right-winger as we ignore the hateful outbursts from the mad supra-left-wingers as relatively harmless (and don't you just enjoy the similarity of the curses?) venting of steam by some really not dangerous minority moonbats. But can we allow ourselves this luxury? Could we continue ignoring the ugly face of the left and right moonbats cursing, spitting on, attacking our soldiers, our policemen, each other?

Our country is going through a difficult period, and I do not have to expand on this subject here. We can deal, as we have always done, with the dire straits of military and political realities. There is, however, a new dimension, hitherto untraveled and not even sufficiently charted - the tears being created in the delicate fabric of our nation by the above mentioned moonbats .

I shall start with the first symptom - the significant drop in the number of recruits volunteering for the battle units. This is the first in our history. And both wings of moonbats have made a contribution to this phenomenon. Both wings and our lack of attention and passivity are complicit in this "new wave", when some of our children, brainwashed by the cheap slogans, are deciding that defending out country is secondary to serving the idols of an ideology or religion.

And the growing number of cases when our soldiers refuse to carry out an order - not because it is unlawful and even not because it may cause exceeding violence, but just because their ideological guru or their rabbi told them so; this is another symptom of the malady that should force us to ask ourselves - for how long we can continue ignoring the abyss we are coming to? Our nation was teared apart by internal forces twice in its history: will it allow the moonbats to do so again?

What bothers me in this specific case is the silence (mostly) from my friends on the right. Of course, the ultra-left and just left have a field day with the Weiss story. But I will be more than glad to hear some voices of sanity from the right wing now, when sanity is so necessary.

And to the moonbats: the silent majority, unfortunately, remains silent so far. But do not count on it to remain silent forever. The day of reckoning may come, and we may decide that this bird may do with some wing clipping. Painful as it may be...

(*) Addendum

(This post is not about Hillel Weiss, as you have gathered by now, but as a matter of interest, here some information about the character.)

Hillel Weiss is Professor of Hebrew Literature, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. In addition, our learned gentleman is a member of the Sanhedrin (a self-appointed bunch, to make sure).

Mr Weiss has some strong opinions on the role religion should play in my (and yours) lives:
PROFESSOR HILLEL WEISS, SANHEDRIN RELIGIOUS COURT: We are not serving the Christians or the Muslims, we are serving the only truth that is in the world, and it is the Jewish law and the Torah, and all the nations have to obey this law.
Does it sound familiar? His counterparts, the Ayatollahs, have a very similar formula - he may want to sit down with them to compare notes...

He is quite certain about the way to deal with people who do not heed his opinion:
...Yair Naveh, the general who issued the ban, is a religious man and the Sanhedrin summoned him twice to explain himself.

HILLEL WEISS: This general, personally, took decisions that destroy and enters the holocaust to the Jewish people again.

MATT BROWN: But the general ignored the rabbis and they branded him a Moser.

HILLEL WEISS: We told him that, according to the Jewish law, he's like a Moser, one that delivers Jews to gentiles, one who delivers land, one who delivers property.

MATT BROWN: In ancient Jewish law, being a Moser amounted to a death sentence.

HILLEL WEISS: "It's lawful to kill the Moser in any place, in any time."
Mr Weiss and his friends have also some unorthodox opinions on the issue of 9/11 and others, but it is most interesting (and it meshes quite nicely with his strong opinion on the lawfulness of killing a "Moser"), he is one of the selected group of sickos denying the accepted version of Rabin's murder. Anyone who knows where the sleaze that murdered Rabin came from, could trace the probable reasons for this specific insanity.

To add color to the above, the notoriously anti-Semitic Rense is using the material provided by Weiss and his friends, happily linking to it.

To add more reasons for worry: professor Weiss is not only a teacher in an university, he is a political figure to be aware of: recently his name appeared on a manifesto of the Jewish Leadership faction of Likud (having for its leader Moshe Feiglin). This is how deep the rot reaches.

And what was professor's response to the critics after the latest revolting appearance?
...Weiss said "cursing is in the framework of the right to free speech. Rabbi Ovadia Yossef and soccer fans act in the same manner."

"Nobody has the moral right to investigate me. The police and army would be better off taking a look at their recent actions instead of investigating me. I don't care about this investigation," Weiss continued.
Look who is talking about moral right. Merde.

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Bomb me to smithereens. Please!

Anything is better than this. No pictures from there on this here blog...



To Shane.


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09 August 2007

The joke of the week


Thus does a person with a moniker "Tim from Australia" title his opus in AlJazeera.com. He supports this revolutionary discovery by a following example of a brilliant historical review:
For sixty years, Arab countries have been offering peace deals to Israel and it always refuses to even negotiate.
That really got me thinking over these 60 years. In 1948 Arabs came out with a smasher of a peace offer, and Israel had the chutzpa to reject it disdainfully. In 1967 Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt invented a new, modified version of a peace offer, which was quite appealing too, and again the Israelis had the nerve to reject it. In 1973 Egypt and Syria came out with an even more modern, cutting edge technology offer that could have brought peace and prosperity forever to the Middle East, were they able to persuade the Israelis, who by that time have become totally recalcitrant.

And so it goes, Tim. Keep plugging, meanwhile...

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.

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This is how I like them

The critter in this picture could serve as a model, indeed as a shining beacon to many others, both animals and humans, in the ways of patience and responsiveness required to pose for a good unobstructed and unhurried shot.


Click and enjoy.

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08 August 2007

Judeosphere’s List of Top Ten Double Standards

It is so good that a simple link to it will not do it justice. So here it goes in full:

Judeosphere’s List of Top Ten Double Standards On the Middle East ™


(1) Christian fundamentalists who support Israel are religious fanatics; Jewish fundamentalists who oppose Zionism are individuals of deep religious and moral conviction.

(2) Comparing Israelis to Nazis is a poignant political statement; comparing Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler is a gross distortion of history with the intent of demonizing foreign leaders and justifying imperialist military campaigns.

(3) Palestinian nationalism reflects the inherent right of all people to self-determination; Jewish nationalism is an archaic form of tribalism and racial supremacy.

(4) Criticizing academics that legitimize hateful stereotypes of African-Americans and Arab-Americans is a proper response from minority groups who oppose racism; criticizing academics that legitimize hateful stereotypes of Jewish-Americans is an attempt to stifle free speech.

(5) Iran has the right under international law to pursue nuclear power for peaceful purposes; any other country that pursues nuclear power is endangering the environment and increasing the risk of nuclear proliferation.

(6) Jews who cite the lessons of the Holocaust as a rationale for opposing Israel are moralists; Jews who cite the lessons of the Holocaust as a rationale for opposing authoritarian regimes in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq are neocon warmongers.

(7) Israeli policies are said to be tantamount to “genocide”; accusations of genocide in Darfur are a Zionist plot to divide the Muslim community.

(8) The war on terrorism is driven by Islamophobia; the “new anti-semitism” is a myth created to deflect legitimate criticism of Israel.

(9) Efforts to oppose anti-semitism on college campuses undermine academic freedom; academic boycotts against Israel infringe upon academic freedom but serve a greater good.

(10) Burning flags with Muslim symbols is desecration, burning the Israeli flag and the Star of David is political protest.

Again, please remember that the above belongs in its entirety to Judeosphere.

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A grim milestone

From the post "Grim milestone" reached: 500 Palestinian Arabs killed by each other this year by our (younger) colleague Elder Of Ziyon:

We have reached the "grim milestone" of 500 PalArabs that we have been able to document violently killed by each other this year.
Go and read the whole post. Just another quote:
Don't expect any press releases about this milestone, though.
Yeah....

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